a journey from here to maternity; mothering, breast cancer;related and unrelated infertility issues

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

I should be blogging everything I know but it's all such a mishmash of regrets and whatifs and mostly anticipatory disappointment.

doing lots of acupuncture. did ovulate last cycle. so the timelines were thrown out and I'll be doing the 2ww right through school holidays, often a notably nap-free time. that is of course if we even get to that point.

meanwhile still semi-lying to my friends with vaguenesses about stress and acupuncture to avoid their invitations to go out. I should be pleased, but I feel, rather, a bit besieged. their kids are older, in particular my best friend. for years I kept up the friendship before I had kids while hers were little. now I have a little kid and she is at a loose end, she seems not to make allowances for that. and of course she can't make allowances for the IVF because she doesn't know about it and on the basis of the reaction I anticipate from her - probably not the most sensitive person in the world - I just don't want to share it with her.

and wondering what's next, if there's any hope for a further cycle, wishing I hadn't let my ovaries get nuked during chemo. wishing a lot. and still holding in my mind my daughter's name.

The Existential Imagination (Picador compilation, Satre, Kafka, Moravia - read all except the boring bits and excerpts from books I may want to read in full one day.)

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line(Essays)

J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the Narcissus
(this book was written in the 1800s by the author of Heart of Darkness, on which Apocalypse Now was partly based. I'm sorry about the title, but I also don't believe you can change history.

William Gibson,Count Zero

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale (vol 1 of his biography)

Frank McCourt Angela's Ashes (should really be reading this one aloud so A. knows how lucky he is!

Salman Rushdie, Fury
Martin Amis, NightTrain

Keith Laumer, The Galaxy Builder (sci-fi slosh)

The Picador Book of Contemporary New Zealand Fiction (ed. Fergus Barrowman)(the short stories only, not the extracts which bug me)

Neal Stephenson, Snowcrash

Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (second time.)

Andrew McGahan, The White Earth (much overrated, imho)

Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers

The Travels of Marco Polo

Will Self, How the Dead Live

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

Vladimir Nabokov, Ada

Christopher Green, Toddler Taming

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Janette Turner Hospital, Due Preparations for the Plague

R. Evans, The Pyjama Girl

Books read while recovering from breast cancer

DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon

My Year of Meat, Ruth Ozeki

The Vivisector, Patrick White

William Gibson, Idoru

Martin Flanagan, The sound of one hand clapping
Lance Armstrong, It’s not about the bike